Technology has become an indispensable part of our lives. In this sort of an environment, it would be wrong to undermine the importance of data recovery processes. However, success is not always guaranteed and depends a lot on the way the file was deleted or lost. Here we take a look at the possible reasons for data recovery shortcomings as well as problem resolution strategies.

Reasons for Data Recovery Shortcomings

Files deleted or lost during formatting can still be recovered. But it becomes impossible if the file was overwritten or malfunctioned as a result of a Trojan/virus. A few common cases where data recovery shortcomings become painfully evident are listed below.

Data recovery falls short of locating a specific file if the stored location is undetectable by the recovery program or is missing entirely.

Files that were deleted a long time back or have become lost are no longer available for recovery.

Overwriting data is one of the most common causes of data recovery shortcomings.

In a physical storage device, the data gets stored in a magnetic area. If that strip/section gets damaged, data cannot be recovery.

If the header information for the file or folder becomes inaccessible due to heavy infection, recovery may not be able to solve the problem.

Unplugging the Device

Make sure you do not use the faulty storage device after data loss occurs. Unplug the drive and then plug it externally to a different computer with the help of USB/SATA adapter. You can now effectively overcome data recovery shortcomings and start recovering files once more. This method is a great way to make sure no read/write operation has occurred on the problem device and increases the chances of successful data recovery.

Use Suitable Software

You should always make use of good quality software that is capable of meeting your data recovery requirements. The performance of the software should match the task. There is lots of different data recovery software available in the market, and you need to pick the right one. Even free software can come in handy, but it all depends on how wisely you use them.

Seek Professional Help

If you wish to increase the chances of successful data recovery but do not know how to proceed, it is important to seek professional help. It’s true that starting the data recovery process is a costly affair but you need expert assistance if you want to get the job done. The experts usually work on your hard drive in a clean room. They have all the tools they need to extract as much information as possible from the hard drive. This process is time-consuming and you should look for another option if you’re short on time.

Small business owners can attest to the importance of IT support. Your screen freezes when you’re delivering an important client presentation online. Your office Wi-Fi goes haywire. Your system crashes when you open a new application. All these are situations that require immediate IT attention, and if you do not have an in-house IT support guy, it is only a matter of time before your business takes a hit.

You should search for potential candidates through online career websites, local tech trade schools, and technical recruiters. However, before you hire them, you need to ask the following five questions during the interview to assess whether they are the right fit for the job.

Have you handled disaster recovery and data backup before?

Backing up your valuable company data is important. Even more important is securing this data. Unfortunately, most small business put backup and disaster recovery on the back-burner. By the time they come around to the idea, it is too late. If your company has the necessary resources to set up a server room, your first IT support hire should possess the skills to design and implement one. He/she should know the right methods to ensure the security of the server room, and protect it from natural disasters, like earthquakes, fires, floods, and storms.

What is your expected salary?

This depends on several factors, including:

Experience

Certifications

Skills

Location

Job requirement

Considering the different variables in play, you should ask the potential candidate what his/her ballpark is, and then begin negotiations. This is a good tactic, especially if you have a limited company budget. It is best to seek out entry-level guys who have the right technical skills instead of specialists with advanced certifications as this helps cut down on expenses. Moreover, you won’t need that level of expertise for your company.

Are you a team player?

The IT support candidate must be the right fit for the job.

They should possess decent communication skills and should be adept at handling other employees, especially when tempers flare over simple user errors and uncooperative tech.

The candidate’s communication style can be judged by asking him/her to describe a tech mess they handled on behalf of someone else. Or, you could engage in role play regarding a help desk request scenario.

Look for candidates who explain things clearly to other employees, and do not spout random technical jargon.

Are you willing to work on weekends and after-hours?

Systems can crash at any moment. So, it is important that your IT support person is ready to be on-call on weekends and nights, or whenever trouble calls. You should make your expectations known right at the beginning so that you do not end up with a person who is not ready for this sort of commitment.

Can you assess my current information systems?

Your candidate must be ready to analyze and report on the effectiveness of your current systems and equipment, including VOIP, computers, printers, landlines, and other technical devices. He/she should be able to recommend software apps for your systems, and remind you of outdated apps and updates. If your company requires a technology upgrade, he/she must be capable of sourcing, and devising a proper budget for new software and hardware.

Following these points, you can ensure that you do not go wrong with your company’s first IT support hire. The right candidate can make all the difference between making and breaking your business.

Owners of small business IT companies often find that traditional business advice fails to produce the best results. They require tips that don’t mimic the suggestions given to their larger, big-box competitors, and instead play up their strengths. The following tips are meant specifically for small business IT organizations.

Form a Solid Support Network

Small business owners often feel isolated from the larger business community. To combat this, they need to follow an aggressive networking strategy.

They need to build a social media presence from the comfort of their own home, and also use their connections to find solutions to the problems they face.

They can also use their network to take tough calls on their business.

Sometimes, looking at the business from an outsider’s perspective works wonders, allowing them to gain clarity and form an action plan for moving forward.

Being a part of a group also means connecting with fellow small business IT owners and discussing issues.

Networking may seem time-consuming but the better a person is, the more benefits they can reap in the future.

Choose Small Business IT Goals Wisely

It’s important for small business owners to break larger goals into small, manageable ones. Revenues can be broken up into smaller numbers, so that they’re more attainable. It’s important for the employees in a small business to keep track of their progress towards the goals. Not only does it help them stay focused, it also keeps them updated on the state of their business.

Delegation of Responsibility

Small business IT owners must know when to delegate duties; they can’t be everywhere at once, so it’s important to know which business practices they must focus on. Hiring employees comes with the territory, and they soon learn that having others to do the job for them leads to greater income. It’s important to hire specific people for specific job roles. The trick is for the owner to focus on what they do best, and then delegate the remaining tasks.

Low Overhead is Important

Office area can be costly, and it doesn’t make sense to have a huge workspace when small business employees are out most of the time working with customers. Creating a virtual workforce is a good idea. Moreover, a reduced overhead means greater peace of mind. It allows the owners to take a cut from the revenue when the business doesn’t report much profit. A low overhead allows business owners to take pricing decisions they would have not been able to otherwise.

Remove All Distractions

A small business requires the full focus of the owner in order to grow and evolve. If there is a secondary venture, a full-time manager is a must. Otherwise, it can serve as a distraction and derail existing efforts. Avoiding distractions means better management so that stuff gets done on a daily basis

As much as you would not have it happen, a lot of your non-spam emails invariably land into the spam folder. Here are some tips that will help your emails be on top of the inbox.

1. Follow the CAN-SPAM Act

The use of electronic messaging for commercial prospects must comply with the key requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act. There are severe penalties for non-compliance. Some avoidable issues include:

Misleading or false header information

Deception in subject lines

Not mentioning away physical location to recipients

Hiding the unsubscribing option

Not honoring opt-out requests

2. Avoid Trigger Words

There is no unique list of trigger words that you can safely avoid. Also, it cannot be said with certainty that emails will land up in spam boxes simply because there is a trigger word in it.

The key here is to try and stay out of promotions and commercial advertisements. Words and phrases that are commonly found in promotional emails need to be avoided.

3. Send the text version for HTML emails

Many emails land in spam folders because of the HTML codes they use. This can be easily prevented by sending a text version of the email.

Also, you have things covered if the recipient is not equipped to read HTML emails.

4. Permission marketing works

Permission marketing was first coined by Seth Godin. The fundamental premise of this technique is to take the permission of your customers to allow you to email them.

You can push it a little further. When they subscribe to your emails, go ahead and ask them to place you on the whitelist.

5. Install and apply spam checkers

It is always worthwhile to install and use a genuine spam checking filter before you send out those emails.

These filters do some routine checks and let you know if your email could have a potential element of spam.

6. Avoid blacklists

Once your email server has been placed on a blacklist, you will find it extremely difficult to send email reliably, especially to people who are new in your list.

There are a number of free services that help you ascertain if your email server has been placed on a blacklist.

If you are indeed on a blacklist, you should look to follow up with the website that blacklisted you.

7. Be proportionate with text and image

Best email practices do not warrant any use of images at all. If you must include images, follow these tips:

Do not go for emails that are only images

It is better to go for a couple of lines for every graphic image

Well-optimized images are better than raw files

Go for well-formatted HTML images

8. Steer out of spam traps

Spam traps are those email addresses that have been flagged ‘non-human’ by ISPs. You should avoid using a spam trap email in the mailing list. Use a process for opting in and do not buy from email brokers.

But using the internet presents some unique challenges to the quality of audio. Failing to address this could result in slow business and hurt customer relations. Help yourself by adopting the following steps:

Get a DECT phone

For VoIP, Ethernet cords perform better than WiFi connections. Stability of WiFi connections could be manipulated by interfering devices and it would anyway be troublesome to maintain consistency in connection inside enclosed establishments.

If you are constantly moving away from computers, Ethernet will not be of much use either. DECT or Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications can be installed. The personal spectrums of these phones cut out interferences.

The DECT base can be plugged into a USB port and you gain secure access to the desired network.

Settle the jitters

The voice information you receive through VoIP calling is delivered in packets. To work properly, these packets should be spaced out evenly and be delivered in a constant flow.

A variation of network errors could cause these packets to arrive outside of order. This scrambles the audio and makes the audio difficult to comprehend.

Small jitters can be handled by replacing the Ethernet cable with a Category 6 cable. This increases the pace of transferring information quicker and makes it more likely for data to arrive out of place.

A jitter buffer is for greater severity. It stores voice packet briefly and ensures they are played in the right order.

Consider contention

The contention ratio measures the gap between the available bandwidth and the maximum possible demand for a service. As it is VoIP communications need to contend with other web activities that utilize bandwidth.

The higher the number of users you compete with, the lower will be the quality of the call.

A good way to make sure this does not happen is to buy guaranteed contention ratio from the provider. This could be expensive. But the business definitely makes up for any costs involved. The interruptions will be fewer and wait times will become negligible.

Go for VoIP calling headsets

Better VoIP calling experiences do not always come at great costs. Sometimes, a simple replacement of headphones goes a long way into making things easier for you. Cheaper or obsolete pattern headphones suffer from thin insulation on the cables.

Make sure the new headphones have cords that are short and well insulated. This becomes more important if employees make calls from home. The personal headphones may not meet business standards.

The reaction of users to spam is divisive – while some find spam a nuisance, others ignore it completely. If you fall in the former category and want spam protection for your inbox, the following measures can assist you with a great spam filter.

Fake email IDs work

There are several sites that require you to submit your email ID into a form before you can access the content. Chances are you might not feel comfortable providing your email address to that specific website. The ideal form of spam protection in this case is leaving a bogus email ID.

Get encryption for your email address

During the initial stages of email address creation, use a combination of numbers and letters that are random in nature, and not commonly seen. Such a weird combination of letters and numbers might be difficult for people to recall, but it sets up a challenge for spam programs that randomly send spam mail to your email ID.

Never open spam mail

Whenever you open HTML spam mail with attractive graphics, the graphic gets pulled from the server of the spammer’s computer. This is your computer informing the spammer that your email ID remains in use. Ensure proper spam protection by avoiding such mails.

Never reply to spam

You must’ve dealt with irritating telemarketers at some point in your life? Remember how they wouldn’t stop calling once you answered the phone, and were extremely challenging. This is the exact same situation with spammers. Once you’ve replied to a spam mail, you’ll have confirmed to the spammer that your email address is legit, and they won’t stop sending you mail.

Never post your email ID

As soon as your email ID is entered into an online contact list, guest book, chat room, ezine, newsgroup, or website, you’ve basically invited a spammer to gain free access to your email ID. Spammers use programs called spiders, bots, and crawlers to “harvest” email addresses. If you don’t follow the usual spam protection guidelines and enter your email address into a website, you’ve become the target of spammers and your ID is going to be used in future email campaigns.

Install a decent spam filter

Irrespective of how efficient and updated your spam protection systems are, there is still the possibility that some spam mails might just slip through the cracks. It is for this reason that you should probably consider installing a spam filter. You’ll find plenty of good spam filters on the Internet that can curb the influx of spam in your inbox.

Server virtualization does away with the traditional, one application per server strategy and permits businesses to run various virtual servers on one physical machine. The process utilizes the full potential of a physical server and creates independent computers on every server. This, in turn, decreases power consumption and eases the maintenance process while maintaining the computing power.

Implemented properly, small business server virtualization frees up valuable human and economic resources for additional strategic initiatives. Thus, small business server virtualization gives small scale businesses the chance to repurpose their IT infrastructure quickly, offering increased up-time, greater fault tolerance and enhanced operational continuity in case of operational failure. If you’re wondering how to increase the efficiency of your small business server virtualization, you might consider taking a look at the points below.

Choosing Your Targets for Virtualization

Always look at your virtualization investment decisions from a realistic perspective. A thorough evaluation of your small business server environment will help you understand which hardware you need to virtualize. There are free tools available on the Internet that enable you to gauge which servers would make ideal candidates for virtualization.

Compatibility Issues

Prior to virtualizing the target servers, you should ensure that your existing software apps are compatible with virtualization software. Professional solution providers will give you an idea if your current applications and small business server environment are good for virtualization or not.

The rapid advancement of technology means that the virtualization platform of your choice might not be compatible with outdated server hardware. Most virtualization platforms, also known as hypervisors, each happen to be very unique platforms. It is always important to make an informed decision regarding which hypervisor is going to operate the best with the available hardware platforms and still meet the needs of your small business.

Data Backup Plan

Always check your data backup plan once you’ve decided to virtualize your servers. Several vendors provide advanced backup products that support the virtual infrastructure. Some of these remain priced according to the number of virtual servers on a single machine, and they are actually cheap. On the other hand, if your small business is connected to an extended maintenance contract from your data backup infrastructure, you might want to think whether making changes can break the contract or not.

Proper training

The maintenance of a virtual server differs considerably from a regular physical environment. Prior to virtualizing your servers, you might want to train your staff on the right way to maintain a virtual infrastructure.

Nowadays, the quantity of data that is accessed remotely on a regular basis has gone up exponentially. Accessing data remotely on mobile devices or via remote offices/branch offices (ROBOs) has become a common practice among various industries. Under the circumstances, the need for an effective remote data backup strategy has become unavoidable.

Numerous firms have to conduct remote data backup to preserve the security and integrity of their data, and though this might seem like a complicated task, various tech options are available to assist those responsible for this type of vital data protection. Read on to find out more on the best practices and tips for your company’s remote data backup.

Initial preparation

There are a couple of things, however, that you first need to determine in order to ensure that the offsite backup of data goes smoothly and is the correct fit for your company. Keep in mind that data backup affects every aspect of your firm, from bandwidth to data location, and from data volume to IT staffing. This is why it is extremely important that the remote data backup process goes off without a hitch. As data replication is sometimes done along with backup, it is necessary to compare remote replication and remote data backup. Moreover, attempts should be made to understand the way the cloud works as a backup target for various ROBO sources.

Why data-backup needs to be completed efficiently?

Remote data backups are essential for the protection of important corporate data. Organizations are best able to safeguard their office data if they move it remotely to either a cloud service or data center. It is important to try and store data remotely instead of on the mobile devices themselves. However, despite the difficulty associated with the backup of data, options do exist. You should focus on the challenges that mobile devices can cause using remote data backup. In this case, cloud is the best option for you and can minimize the extent of problems you might have regarding the data backup.

Exploring the various approaches

Attempt to understand which kind of ROBO backup approach works the best, and then stick to it. You also need to impart protection to your ROBO data. For this reason, you should consider remotely backing up your data or remote replication. However, the two are not the same, and you should deliberate carefully on which process will work the best for your company. If you’re a small organization, you might try to use a removable disk drive as a target for SMB remote data backup.

Social networking websites have become an integral part of our lives. They not only provide a platform to connect with new and existing friends but have become necessary tools for serious job searches and corporate networking.

However, you should never forget about your safety in the process. It is key to protect your identity from identity theft, and social networking sites make this harder since they leave a trail of personal details. So how can you boost your social network security? It all starts with taking responsibility for protecting yourself. Below you will find five tips that will enable you to take the matter of social network security into your own hands so that your private information does not fall into the wrong hands.

How Much Information Is Too Much?

Opening up to others and sharing interesting information online is an active part of social networking, but there are some details you should never divulge. For the sake of your physical and identity safety, you must never disclose your social security number. Even if you are asked only the last 4 digits, never reveal them. You should also take care not to give out your home address, birthdate and home phone number to strangers. Moreover, any discussion involving your PIN numbers, credit card details, passwords, and bank account information must be avoided for the sake of social network security.

Maintain Your Privacy

Social networking websites understand the significance of social network security, and they offer users greater control over their personal privacy settings. Never settle for the default settings. Make sure you go through the privacy sections and configuration to understand what options are available to limit who and what groups are able to view different aspects of your personal information. Make sure you view and adjust the settings on your profile from time to time, as they get updated frequently.

Do Not Blindly Trust

The Internet is full of different sorts of people, and some of them like to falsify their identity. It could be due to a harmless prank, or they might be famous celebs who wish to conceal their actual identities. But this method is also adopted by users who wish to defame or embarrass somebody else by impersonating them, or stealing an identity for various crimes and financial gain. This is why you must verify that a particular page belongs to who you think it does prior to clicking on a link or sharing numerous details. Look for anything out of the ordinary that might help you unmask the impostor.

Keep an Eye Out For Comments

The significance of social network security has been understood by blogs as well, and many now employ authenticated commenting systems. Some users leave comments under the guise of someone else. Commenting systems prevent this from happening by allowing registered users to log in and leave comments as a verified user.

Avoid Accidental Reveals

Sometimes, social networking sites make it easy for details you wouldn’t otherwise tell people to slip by. This is why you should be aware of the kind of information you put online where others might be able to use it for nefarious means.

An average IT firm deals with a huge amount of data on a daily basis. The term data security is very important for such firms. Cloud computing security is an excellent option, in this case. However, public cloud computing security systems are not exactly known for their excellent organisation and confidentiality records. This is why more and more IT firms are choosing private cloud computing security firms to ensure the safety of the data that they are responsible for.

Prepare backups

While cloud computing is one of the best options around for safe keeping data, IT firms are always encouraged to prepare and retain a backup of all their files with them. The chances of cloud computing going wrong are very slim, but to err is only human. Hence, backups are rather important to ensure that the data is not easily lost. The backup should be kept safe and discreet.

This is one of the most basic and highly important criteria to keep in mind while choosing a cloud computing security team. The IT firms have full right to expect a clear transparency between them and the people, who have been given the charge of handling their most treasured secrets. This can be done by:

Asking for credentials.

Verifying the credentials provided.

Taking a look at their past record.

Looking into bad reviews.

Know where the data has been placed

It is not true that once an IT firm has handed over their data to a legitimate security firm, they can forego all cares regarding the security of their data. The firm must be aware of where its data has been placed so that it has control over it, even if the security firm resigns or decides to close shop suddenly.

Test the security

It has become very commonplace for firms to hire professional hackers to test the limitations of their firewalls to ensure that there are no existing loophole or bugs in the system that can compromise their data. This is an excellent practice to try out.

Make sure of the security firm’s professionalism

The firm must make sure that their cloud computing security team takes the safekeeping of their data very seriously. This is why checking and verifying credentials are so important. It not just ensures that the people handling company secrets are not a sham, but are good at what they claim to do.